R. Keith Sawyer: Explaining Creativity. The Science of Human Innovation, Oxford University Press 2006

This impressive and lucidly written book is the most comprehensible book on the research on creativity I know. The author's goal is to provide "the best explanation of creativity that current science has to offer." In that effort, Sawyer draws from a number of fields including psychology, sociology, art history and literary criticism, and addresses such themes as the myths of creativity, the contextual features of creativity and computational aspects of it. The approach is dialogical and suggestive, insightful and intelligent throughout.

One reason why I find the book particularly useful is due to its emphasis on what the author calls performance creativity. "Recent overviews of creativity research have neglected performance entirely ... This is the first book about creativity that considers performance to be central to our explanation of creativity. When you add performance to the mix, you have to explain three important new things: improvisation, collaboration, and communication." (p. 7)